Violent Crimes

Violent crimes can vary from relatively minor assaults to murder. They also include assault bodily harm, assault with a weapon, aggravated assault, uttering threats, sexual assault, firearms offences and robbery.

At times, while investigating these matters, the police will fail to obtain statements from everyone who witnessed the event and potentially have evidence that is helpful to the individual that is charged. As well, in this day and age, there is often surveillance video in the place of the occurrence that may not be kept indefinitely (many places in fact only keep surveillance video for a maximum of 30 days). Given the potential for lost evidence that can be helpful to the individual that is charged, it is important to take steps to obtain and preserve this evidence at the earliest possible occasion.

In other situations, these charges will often involve one person’s word against another’s. It is important to keep in mind that all criminal charges have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In situations where a supposed ‘victim’ tells a version of events and the person charged testifies to another version, it is often very difficult for a judge to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the version told by the supposed ‘victim’ is the truth. Therefore, it is often possible to raise a doubt about what occurred and secure a verdict of not guilty in these types of offences.